A minute later I heard the three of them—Pappas Effendi, Fulton, and the guard—tramp past my doorway and out to the ferry stage. Just then the arriving steamer hooted.
"Now," said this waitress-in-a-million, "they have gone, and so must you. The Turks may come any moment, and if they find you here I shall suffer more than you."
"Goodbye, and a million thanks," I said, fervently, and walked into the open.
Without even turning my head to see whether the disappearance was known I swerved to the right, and, taking great care not to attract attention by walking in haste, passed up the long line of steps leading to the bridge. I continued to look straight ahead, but I could sense the presence, only a few yards away, of the German soldiers who loitered by the railings. Fortunately, several other people were moving up or down the steps; and dressed as I was in a civilian suit obtained from the Dutch Legation, the Germans paid no more attention to me than to them.
I reached the pavement, and still not daring to look behind, crossed the tram-lines to the opposite side of the bridge. Then only did I turn round to find out whether I were followed.
Everything was normal. Not one of the idlers who lined the railings had noticed me; the usual traffic and the usual crowds ebbed and flowed across the bridge; the sun shone. I lit a cigarette and walked eastward.
Having crossed the circus of streets at the Galata end of the bridge, I turned to the right and made for the Rue de Galata. At the corner I looked back again. To my very great relief, I found that I was still not followed.
I was conscious of an intense exhilaration as, free at last, I rubbed elbows with the crowd of nondescript Levantines. It was the first time for months that I had ever walked the streets without the burden of an oppressive consciousness that a yard or two to the rear was an animal of a Turkish soldier. That sense of always being followed and spied upon and menaced and held on a leash had weighed so much on my mind that I had come to look upon a guard in the same light as an old-time convict must have looked upon the lead ball chained to his foot. The sense of freedom from this incubus was glorious.
I was worried about my chances of meeting the unknown Russian who had agreed to hide White and myself. According to the plan detailed to me some hours earlier by Vladimir Wilkowsky, he was to wait for me in a German beerhouse from two o'clock to four. I had been unable to escape in time for the appointment and it was now four-twenty.
Nevertheless, hoping that the Russian might have lingered over his drink, I decided to carry out the same arrangements as if I had arrived in time. These, I remember thinking as I strolled along the Rue de Galata, studiously unconscious of gendarmes and soldiers, were suggestive of a Deadwood Dick thriller, or of some sawdust melodrama at a provincial theatre.